


Hate (working title)

by Kamato



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Between Chapter 6 and Epilogue, F/F, Gay Old West, Graphic Violence, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Sadie doesn't come up until chapter 2, Summary at the End of Each Chapter if Requested in Comments, Will Post Warnings at the Beginning of Each Chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-01-27 07:53:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kamato/pseuds/Kamato
Summary: Ilsa built a life for herself after bounty hunting turned sour. This is how it falls apart, and how Sadie Adler tries to help her pick up the pieces.
Relationships: Original Female Character(s) - Relationship, Sadie Adler & Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter contains violence, foul language, homophobia, a lovers' quarrel, and sexism. Read at your own risk.

Stepping out of her bedroom, Ilsa MacGenis finished adjusting her belt and sniffed the air, grinning at the scent and sound of eggs and sausage cooking. Her bare feet padded across the hardwood floor as she walked into the kitchen. In the kitchen, a woman wearing a sturdy flannel shirt and cuffed black denim work pants stood over a wood stove, pushing around scrambled eggs and some ground sausage on a pan with a spatula. 

The woman at the stove turned as she heard Ilsa approaching her, flashing her a smile with a tanned face and startling blue eyes. They were the kind of pale, almost grey that reminded one of a stormy sea, and just small and beady enough to be more unnerving than pretty to most people, but not Ilsa. Ilsa looked into her eyes and returned her smile, stepping forward and putting her hands on the other woman’s hips. “Morning, Becca. Thanks for letting me sleep.” 

Rebecca laid a hand on Ilsa’s shoulder and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “Of course. Not easy to keep from waking you, but it leaves you smiling, so it’s well worth the effort.” She turned back to the food, giving it another quick stir to keep it from scorching while the rest of it cooked. “Did you sleep well?”

Ilsa shook her head, then realized that Ilsa couldn’t see her as she’d turned back to the food, and said, “No. Better with you beside me, though. Makes me feel safe.”

Scoffing, Rebecca glanced over her shoulder at Ilsa with her eyebrows raised and an incredulous expression on her face. “I make you feel safe? You’re the one with all the guns and muscles.” She lifted the pan off the stove and turned around to the counter on the opposite side of the kitchen, where she’d set out a couple of tin plates. She scooped half of the food onto one plate, then the remaining food onto the other. “Anyhow, food’s ready. This is the last of the goat sausage, though; If you don’t want to head to town and spend some money, we’ll be eating eggs and canned beans for the rest of the winter. Plus we need a new hammer and hacksaw.”

Ignoring her request for the time being, Ilsa instead grinned at her earlier statement and flexed her arms in the style of a circus strongman, stretching out the shoulders and arms of her patched purple vest and grey undershirt. She shot Rebecca a sidelong grin as Rebecca rolled her eyes, though still smiling. “You like my muscles, huh? Want to get a closer look?” 

Rebecca instead grabbed a fork from the drawer, put it in her food, and took it to the dining table in the next room, walking straight past the flexing woman. After Rebecca walked past her, Ilsa stopped flexing and let out a held breath. A nervous look crossed her face, but she shook it off and silently chided herself for wondering if she’d worn out her welcome with Rebecca. She grabbed her plate and a fork and joined Rebecca in the dining room. 

In the dining room, Ilsa took a spot next to Rebecca and ate a few bites in near silence. Rebecca broke the silence, saying, “I’ll go to Blackwater if you’d rather stay here and feed the cattle.” 

Ilsa put down her fork and chewed her lower lip for a moment, thinking. “I think I’d rather go myself. People might question how a ranch hand got the kind of money to buy all that stuff.”

“I could say I’m buying it with your money.” Rebecca took another bite, chewed, and swallowed, waiting for Ilsa to respond. “Or we could go together,” she said, a hopeful tint to her voice.

Shaking her head, Ilsa said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” At Rebecca’s disappointed expression, she said, “I just don’t trust Harry and David not to fuck things up while the two of us are gone. I trust you more than them.” 

Rebecca kept staring at her food, poking a piece of sausage with her fork. After a moment’s silence, she sighed and said, “I wish we could do things in public together. More than just work, I mean.”

Ilsa leaned forward to look at Rebecca’s face, her brow furrowed. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Take a romantic ferry ride, maybe, or get a picture of us kissing. Things that, well, we can’t do. I want to show you off, bring you home to my parents.”

“Becca, aren’t your parents dead?”

Rebecca closed her eyes and sighed again, nodding. Her voice quieter, hardly above a whisper, she said, “I just, sometimes I wish I loved men.”

Ilsa felt like Rebecca had turned around and stuck her fork in her chest. She blinked rapidly and leaned back a little bit. “I understand. Do you wish I were a man?”

With a shake of her head, Rebecca looked to Ilsa, tears in her eyes. “No, no, I love you how you are. Muscles and calluses and all.” 

Ilsa got out of her chair and stood up, looking at her feet. Insecurity rocked her to the point that she almost fell unbalanced. “Do you like my muscles because they’re manly? Because sometimes when we sleep together, it feels like a man in bed with you?” 

“What? No, I-”

“Do you love me,” Ilsa said, looking up at the ceiling with her hands on her hips, still facing away from Rebecca, “because I have muscles and I shoot guns and say, ‘fuck,’ and wear pants? Is that it?” 

Carefully considering her words, Rebecca said, “I do like those things about you, but-”

“Oh, fuck this,” Ilsa said, stomping into the living room. 

“Ilsa!” Rebecca called after her, getting up from the table. When she made her way around the table and into the doorway between the two rooms, she found Ilsa pulling on socks. “Ilsa, where are you going?”

Pulling on her last sock with a violent enough motion that she almost ripped the fabric, Ilsa said, “I’m going to go get food and tools from Blackwater because I fucking love you.” She reached for her black leather boots with the vulcanized rubber soles by the front door and started to put them on. 

“Aren’t you going to finish your breakfast?” Rebecca asked, concern evident in her voice. 

“You can eat it. I’m not hungry anymore.” Ilsa finished lacing up her boots over her grey work trousers and stepped over to the coat rack by the front door. She grabbed her leather duster and turned to Rebecca, a scowl on her face that left Rebecca yearning to fix whatever had gone sour between them. 

“Ok. Well, make sure you eat something in town, then. Be back by this evening?” 

Rebecca’s concern for her wellbeing softened Ilsa’s ire a little bit, and she nodded before grabbing her gun belt and knapsack from the rack and setting out the door. 

The February wind nipped at Ilsa’s ears and nose as she closed the door behind her and climbed down off the porch. Yellow, frosted grass crunched beneath Ilsa’s boots as she walked towards the stables, fastening her gun belt around her waist. As she approached, she saw movement in the stables, what at first she thought was simply the horses, but then a half-bald, white pate reflected the pale morning sunlight, and she knew that one of the hands had woken up early. 

As Ilsa opened the door to the stables, a paunchy, middle-aged man with a bush of curly brown hair around the back of his head and ears, with an otherwise bald scalp, and a partially greyed, cropped beard looked up from where he’d been dropping hay into the horses’ stalls. “Good morning, Miss MacGenis.” At her scowl, he said, “Who put a hornet up your skirt? Er, pants?”

Ilsa shrugged and opened one of the stalls, raising her hands beside her head to put the horse within at ease. “Rebecca said something I didn’t like. Don’t read too much into it; I’ll probably be in a better mood by the time I come back. Caleb been fed yet, Harold?”

Harold nodded. “Mind me asking where you’re headed?”

“Blackwater. I’m picking up some food and new tools since the leak in the shed ruined the good hammer and saw.” As she said this, Ilsa hefted her saddle from where it sat on an empty crate between the stalls. She trudged over to the chestnut Dutch warmblood and slipped it over the blanket the horse wore on his back during the winter months. “Thataboy, Caleb,” she said, patting her horse on his nose. The horse whickered in response. She continued to prep her horse while saying, “Make sure you and David keep the cattle fed while I’m gone. If you have questions, defer to Miss Sternberg’s judgement.” Having fitted the horse with his bit, she grabbed from a saddlebag her spurs. 

“I will make sure and do that, Miss MacGenis. And I hope you feel better soon.” 

Fastening her spurs over her boots, Ilsa said, “So do I, Mister Nopan.” 

*****

Ilsa’s left thigh started to twinge when she stepped into the Blackwater general store at around noon. She scowled at the pain, and the man behind the counter folded his arms at her expression, as well as her pants. “Can I help you, Miss MacGenis?” 

She leaned her right forearm on the counter and said, “Yes, Mr. Neely, I believe you can.” Slinging her saddlebags from over her shoulder onto the counter with a thump, she told him, “I need a new clawhammer and hack saw. Aside from that, I could use some food.” 

He nodded and stepped over to the tools section of his display. “I suppose you’ll want me to get that for you, since you’re limping.” He said it with a kind of faux concern that a mother in law might use for a disappointing daughter's husband. 

Ilsa scoffed. “I’m not limping, dammit. The cold, it does nasty things to my joints is all.” She shook her head to herself. “I ain’t limping,” she repeated. 

Waving a dismissive hand, he said, “Oh, you’re not old enough for the weather to be bothering your joints. It’s probably an old wound from all that time you spend playing with guns. Leave it to the men, you wouldn’t have a limp.” It stung, how close to the truth he’d guessed.

Glancing at his wrinkled, faded pink skin and half a head of white hair, she said, “I suppose you’d be one to know about age and joints, huh?”

Shaking his head as he grabbed a hammer and saw, Mr. Neely said, “You know, if I didn’t know that you had good money to spend here, I might ask you to leave.” 

Ilsa watched, still leaning on the counter, as he returned and placed the tools on the counter. “How much will that be?”

“Two dollars.” 

Shaking her head, Ilsa opened her knapsack and pulled out an embossed leather wallet. She counted her change, then took a quick glance at some of the other items on the shelves, saying, “Throw in a couple of those jars of pickles, and four of the canned fruit , and I’ll do you one better: I’ll give you two dollars and twenty cents.” She raised her eyebrows and sucked her teeth, expecting him to be offended at her suggestion. 

He rolled his eyes and said, “If it’ll get you out of my store sooner, then fine. I want to see you grab ‘em yourself though, since you ain’t limpin’.” 

Nodding, Ilsa turned back to the store and made for the food she’d selected. She kept herself from limping, but chewed her lip, as not limping meant that she hurt more. He was nearly right in his supposition that she’d gotten shot in the leg playing with guns, only she thought him wrong, as she didn’t consider it play. In fact, it was in the fifth deadliest shootout in the north of Lemoyne and that bloody year 1899 that she received her only bullet wound. Ten bounty hunters went after the notorious Black Belle that day, including Ilsa, having tracked her down to a cabin built on Bluewater Marsh by way of another man meaning to speak with her. Two of them had gone in shirtless, thanks to the sweltering heat of the marsh, and Ilsa’s own clothes were practically soaked through with sweat. 

The Belle herself opened her front door when they approached, a wooden walkway around twenty yards long leading over the marsh to the cabin. Another person was there, a big, blond man with a less ornate Lancaster repeating rifle compared to Black Belle’s. When the bounty hunters spread out, surrounding the walkway, the two of them started moving around on the porch, detonating buried dynamite charges. Men were tossed into the air, legs and hands and fingers and arms ripped from their bodies in sprays of blood and dirt. Ilsa would never forget the smells of detonated explosives mixed with gore and shit. She was lucky; while the other survivors of the explosions were all killed with marksman shots, a stray bullet hit her in outer left thigh. Seeing that there was no victory or arrest to be had, Ilsa chased down her horse, threw herself into the saddle, and rode for her life. 

That was two and a half years ago then, and memories of her dismembered and slaughtered friends assaulted Ilsa every time her old wound twinged. It just looked like a puckered, quarter sized scar, but the muscle inside had healed oddly, so Ilsa scowled while she fetched her food from the shelves in the general store. Returning to the counter with everything in her arms, she showed them to Mr. Neely one by one before putting them into the saddlebags, to demonstrate that she wasn’t trying to pull one over on him. After packing everything, she paid, slung her now heavier saddlebags over her shoulder, and stepped back outside. 

By the time she’d packed her saddlebags back onto the horse, she had her teeth grit and was actually limping. Not feeling like hurting herself further by walking around the horse, she put her right foot in the left stirrup, climbed up sidesaddle, and swung her leg over the saddle. Ilsa nudged her horse with her stirrups just enough to get him to walk. His shoed hooves clapped on the cobblestone central streets of Blackwater as Ilsa rode him over to the saloon. 

After hitching her horse outside of the saloon, Ilsa limped into the saloon, a hard scowl on her face. That early in the afternoon, there were few people in the saloon: a few out of work daytalers playing cards, and some dedicated drunks, but aside from them, only the bartender and Ilsa. As she pushed past the door and onto the main floor, the bartender raised a hand towards her by way of greeting. The others shot her a glance, some of them a double take when they realized she was a woman, then turned back to their gambling and drinking. Ilsa managed to get to the bar, and the bartender asked her, “D’you need a cane, Miss MacGenis? Mr. Neely over at the general store has a couple nice ones-”

“I’ve had enough of that asshole today,” Ilsa told him, sinking into a cushioned barstool with a sigh. “Today’s just a bad day for the leg. Gimme three shots of whiskey, if you’d be so kind,” she said, adding the last phrase with a sardonic tone. He stepped to it while she dug out her wallet again and passed him three quarters. 

One of the gamblers, having loudly lost his hand, got up from the poker table and marched over to the bar. He sat next to Ilsa as she downed one of the almost bleach smelling drinks. As he bought a beer, Ilsa took her second shot, feeling the numbing of the drinks hit her head. The man looked to Ilsa while the bartender fetched his drink, saying, “So, I noticed ya limpin’ in here. Also saw the pants and the gun. Got a story to tell ‘bout that limp?”

Ilsa turned to look at him, her last shot in her hand. She stuck her tongue in her cheek and said to him, “Old bullet wound. Let’s leave it at that.” She drained her second drink as he kept talking. 

“Not a lot of women go around shootin’ folks and gettin’ shot back.” He glanced at her heavy breasts, hidden as they were by her shirt, vest and duster, and said, “Especially not pretty women.” He shot her a grin, what would’ve been almost suave if it weren’t for the missing canine on his upper jaw, incisor on his lower, and the premature hair loss that left his scalp almost half bald. 

Ilsa scowled harder. She muttered, “Wish I had a cane now,” and drank her last shot, mentally going through the laundry list of flaws she found in herself when she looked in the mirror. 

He leaned closer to her, uncomfortably close, but she refused to shy away, staring him down until he leaned back a little as he said, “What was that?”

“I said I wish I had a cane now.” She rubbed the pockmarks on her neck and stood up, turning for the door without a limp, the pain mostly numbed by the drink at this point.

“Why’s that?” he called after her. 

“So I could beat you with it.” 

*****

Ilsa smelled the smoke on the air before she saw it. When she realized what it was, she furrowed her eyebrows and tugged on her horse’s reins to get him to slow. She licked a finger and held it up above her, trying to determine from which direction the wind blew. When she found it blew from the west, she cursed and kicked her horse’s sides to prompt him into a gallop. 

By that point, a few hours after her drinks, the twinge in her leg had started again, but less painful this time. Still, the pain reminded her of that bloody day in ‘99, and her assumptions about the smell of smoke turned dark. She buried her spurs into Caleb’s sides hard enough that he let out an irritated whinny, shaking his head back and forth, but speeding up as much as he could nonetheless. 

Thanks to the overcast skies, Ilsa didn’t see the smoke rising from her ranch until she was a few hundred feet from the fence. They raced towards the fence, Ilsa’s heart hammering in her ears. The barn blocked her view of the source of the smoke, but she knew that her house was burning. After jumping the fence on Caleb’s back and rounding the barn, she saw the home she’d built burning, flames licking out of the windows and the roof partially collapsed. The doors to the stables stood wide open. The hands’ quarters appeared fine, aside from Harold Nopan sitting in front of them, his hands clutching his belly. 

Ilsa slowed her horse as she approached him, then slid out of the saddle. Closer to him now, she saw that he was sitting in a pool of his own blood, his legs splayed out in front of him. At a glance, she saw bullet holes in the knees of his pants, and blood stains in said clothes. Blood, dark enough to almost be black, leaked from between his fingers where he held his belly. As she approached, he looked up with a tear streaked face and shaking breaths. He blinked slowly, almost sleepily, as she approached. 

“Miss-” he started to say, then closed his eyes and winced deeply, the pain creasing his already lined face. He breathed a couple times, shaky and labored. 

Ilsa nodded and crouched in front of him. “Take your time.” 

He shook his head and finally managed to say, “I’m sorry, Miss, muh, Ilsa. I’m sorry. We couldn’t stop ‘em.” He looked over to his left, toward the entrance to the hands’ house. 

Ilsa looked over there, too, and wrinkled her nose as the smell of feces reached her nostrils, even over the smoke from the nearby blaze. “It’s ok, Harry.”

“They went in after David. He screamed for, for a long time. I think he’s dead.” Suddenly, the pain welled up inside him, and he couldn’t help but let out a whimper and blink out another tear. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, a sob behind his tone. 

Ilsa nodded, trying to keep her cool for him even as her heart hammered in her ears and her legs shook in their crouch. “Can you tell me what happened here? And where’s Miss Sternberg?”

Harold nodded slowly, his eyes half lidded for a moment, and Ilsa thought he might fade away before he could say more, but then he looked back up at her and said, “They came from the west. Riders, around ten. I, I went for the hand house, for protection, but didn’t make it. David was sick, so I let him sleep late. They shot me in the knees. Then,” he looked down at his bleeding belly, “knife.” Again, his eyelids drooped, and his head started to nod. Ilsa caught him by his forehead and leaned his head back, snapping her fingers in front of his face. He blinked rapidly and mumbled something more. 

“Mr. Nopan, I need you to stay with me,” Ilsa told him, looking him in his semi-vacant eyes. “I need you to tell me what happened to Miss Sternberg,” she said in deliberate, clear tones. 

“She fought,” he said, his voice barely strong enough to whisper. “Used your gun. They took her, and the horses.” 

Ilsa breathed a sigh of relief, worry, and anguish, a shaky thing that was almost a sob. “Thank you, Harry. I’ll go get the doctor and the police. Try and stay awake, alright?” At his lack of response, she said in a louder voice, “Alright?” He nodded slowly, and she stood up. “God be with you,” she said, and beckoned her horse towards her. 

Caleb had shied away from the blood and the burning house, and Ilsa cursed him for his cowardice as it cost her precious seconds to chase him down before mounting him and riding back to Blackwater.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ilsa tries to get help for what's occurred on her ranch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains foul language, gore, sexism, violence, and mental trauma.

Ilsa shoved the door to the Blackwater police station open hard enough to send it pounding against the wooden doorstop keeping the doorknob from pounding a hole in the wall. The previously bored youth behind the desk, picking his nails, looked up with a start. “Hey! Hey, mister, or miss, what-”

“I need to speak with the chief of police,” Ilsa said, clapping her hands on the desk. His mouth hung open for a second before Ilsa shouted, “Now, goddammit! There’s not a fuckin’ second to lose!” She waved him on as he scrambled out of the chair and to his feet. She shook her head ruefully as he shot her a double take and hurried out the front door. 

Ilsa sighed and folded her arms, leaning back against the desk as she watched the front door. As she waited, she heard a raspy male voice from behind her, in the cells behind the desk, say, “You’ve got some fire, ain’tcha?” Ilsa turned around and saw a skinny, middle aged man in ragged underclothes sitting on the steel bed in there. He scoffed when he saw her face. “A hell of a woman, and I do mean that literally. Your face looks like hell. Guess you’d have to have some fire to live with a face like that.” 

Ilsa sighed and shook her head, looking away. “Well, who’s in a cell and who’s outside of one with all their clothes on?”

“Yeah, you’ve got pants, you’ve got a gun, and soon you’ll be talking to the chief of police. I’m guessing that’s good on one level, and bad on a whole bunch of levels.” Ilsa kept her mouth shut and ground her teeth. She heard a rustling behind her, and the man continued. “Looks like you’ve got some blood on your boot. Yep, whole bunch of levels.” 

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Ilsa muttered. 

The man in the cell leaned back on his bed with a creak and said, “Yeah, keep tellin’ yourself that. Probably make everything easier.” 

Ilsa leaned the heel of her palm on the grip of her Marchington revolver and sucked her teeth, debating shooting him. “Y’know,” she told him, “I’ve killed a lot of men for a lot of reasons. Money, intimidating someone else that I needed alive, protecting myself. Practice. You might be the first man I kill just because I want to.” 

She smirked when she realized she’d shut him up. 

A couple minutes passed before the young cop that was watching the place returned with an older, nearly bald, white haired man in a blue jacket and grey cotton pants who looked, by his mussed hair, uncombed moustache, and the bags under his eyes, like he’d just rolled out of bed. Still, sewn on his jacket were four silver stars, marking him the chief of police. 

“Chief Dunbar,” she said, stepping forward off the desk. 

“Miss MacGenis. Good to see you again. You working?”

She shook her head. “I need your help. My, my home, it’s been attacked. Rebecca, she’s been taken.” She saw in his quirked eyebrow that he didn’t know Rebecca. “She’s one of the hands. The other hands, they were attacked, too. Harold Nopan was shot and stabbed, I don’t know if the other one, David, if he’s alright. I sent the doctor on ahead, he’ll see if anything can be done for Mr. Nopan. We’ll be meeting him there.” 

His eyebrow stayed raised. “We?” 

Ilsa furrowed her brow and her words came out more impatiently, though they were already rushed. “Yes, we. You, me, and as many cops as you can muster. Ten riders hit my farm, burned down my house, killed the men working there, and took my-” She stopped for a second, took a deep breath, and shuffled her feet, staring at them. “My ranch hand. My friend,” she mumbled. 

Chief Dunbar put his hands on his hips and nodded. “I’ll get as many men as I can. We’ll meet you at your ranch, Serenity Fields, right?”

“Yeah,” Ilsa said, starting past him. As she stepped by him though, he clapped a hand on her shoulder, stopping her momentarily. 

“If they come back and we haven’t arrived yet, you and Dr. Billingsly hide or run. Don’t need you two getting yourselves murdered.” 

Ilsa shouldered past him and through the door. “Course not.” 

*****

On the way over, Ilsa told herself that the police would sort this out. They would find Rebecca, the men that did this would be brought to justice, they would attend David’s funeral, cry a bit, and take out a loan to get the house rebuilt, maybe rent Caleb out as a stud a few times. They would rebuild. They would go back to the way things were, just with new hands. And if anybody asked why they were so close, well they could say that hardship made them better friends. 

Then, when she rode her horse through the main gate to the ranch, she saw Doctor Billingsly walking over, hands and wrists stained with blood, white shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows, a grimace on his frown-lined face, illuminated by a low lit lantern that made him look like a ghost, and the reality of the situation hit her so hard she almost fell off the horse. 

“Mr. Nopan?” Ilsa glanced over towards the hand house, just making out the chubby, bald form of Harold Nopan lying on the ground. 

Dr. Billingsly shook his head and pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. “There’s nothing to be done. He’s lost so much blood, I’d be surprised if he woke up again. Aside from that, the knife that went in his gut pierced bowel, I could smell it. Wound’s septic. It’ll either be sepsis or blood loss that kills him, and all we can do is get a priest out here to pray over him, and maybe give him some ether so he suffers minimally.” 

Ilsa sighed, knit her eyebrows, and nodded. “And Mr. Sampson? He was meant to be in the hand house,” she said, and nudged her horse to walk towards the hand house. 

As he followed her, Dr. Billingsly called after her, “I’m not sure you want to see what happened to him. He was still alive when I got here, but expired shortly after.”

Blinking rapidly, Ilsa said, “Hang on. He was alive? Could, could I have saved the boy? God, I didn’t even check.” 

“There was nothing anyone could do. What they did to him, well.” He paused as Ilsa tied Caleb to a post outside the hand house, the horse shuffling nervously thanks to the stink of gore. “You’ll see.” 

Ilsa gestured for the doctor to lead the way and followed him into the hand house. Almost immediately after stepping in, the stink of gore and shit grew to an unbearable degree, cloying and oppressive like a humid summer heat. Ilsa wrinkled her nose and winced. Even in the dark, thanks to the light from the doctor’s lantern, Ilsa saw a trail of blood, what looked like it came from a steady drip, leading from the front door, through the shared kitchen, to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. 

Doctor Billingsly opened the door to the bedroom that the trail of blood led to, an undertaker’s grimace on his face. Taking a peek inside, from the insufficient light of the lantern, what she thought she saw at first was a pile of raw steak from a slaughtered cow. Then she saw the hands and feet tied to the posts of the bed. The light of the lantern flickered, and she caught a glimpse of the blood drenched, pimply, tear tracked face of the dead boy on the bed in front of her. 

With a shaky breath, Ilsa took a step back out of the room. “I think I’ve seen enough. All I can say is that I wish he had died quicker.” She took quick paces out of the house, and saw Harold Nopan on the ground, his shirt cut off him and the wound in his belly more visible. She shook her head and stepped around his corpse. She started to untie her horse from where she’d hitched him, but found her hands trembled too much to undo the knot in the reins. 

Dr. Billingsly stepped out of the hand house to find Ilsa leaning over the hitching post, squeezing it with both hands, and taking deep, shaking breaths through her mouth. “Going to vomit? Don’t feel bad; it’s one thing to skin a deer, something else entirely to see it done to a man.” One of Ilsa’s breaths came out a choked sob. “Oh. Don’t feel bad about crying, either. You knew these men, no doubt cared for them, it makes sense you’d feel something about this.” 

Shaking her head, Ilsa swallowed the lump in her throat, grit her teeth, and prepared to lie to the Doctor. “I’ve seen and done some awful things, Doctor. Shot men in the gut and the testicles, watched them bleed out. I’ve gutted a man worse than these bastards did for Mr. Nopan, but I’ve never tortured someone, let alone biblically.” Before the doctor could see through or call her out on her half-truths, she turned to him and said, “How are you handling this so well? Sure, you’re a doctor, you’ve watched people die, probably killed some by accident, but you kept your composure well enough to check if David Sampson was still alive, and he’s been flayed.”

Dr. Billingsly shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve made house calls all over the plains, and a few into Tall Trees. That’s the territory of a gang called the Skinners. As you can probably guess by their name, they participate in this kind of, as you put it, biblical torture quite regularly.”

Ilsa nodded vigorously, her eyes squeezed shut. “Yeah, I’ve heard of them. Blackwater cops don’t like to go after them, and common men are so scared of them, it would take a posse of fifty men to go after ten. Fuck!” She kicked the hitching post she’d leaned over, almost hard enough to jam her toe. 

All at once, she whirled on the doctor, taking fast, purposeful steps towards him with a finger pointing at him. “You, me, we can’t tell them this was the Skinners. They won’t go after them, they won’t, they won’t stop them if we tell them who it is that did this. No, tell them that they shot David in his bed, that he was so sick he couldn’t fight them.” She spoke with a manic energy, and Dr. Billingsly saw her pointing finger hovering a few inches in front of his chest trembling. 

He gave her a hard look, but she noticed a hint of fear in the way his eyes kept flicking to look behind her, as if hoping the police would show up and relieve him of this decision. After a couple seconds of hesitation, he sighed and shook his head, saying, “I don’t think I can do that, Miss MacGenis. Lie to the police? I think I’m a more honest man than that.” 

Ilsa scowled and her eye twitched. “You’re a sonofabitch.” She stormed past him, bumping her shoulder against his. 

After passing Dr. Billingsly, Ilsa turned her attention to the smoldering wreck that once was her house. The fire had died thanks to the freezing night air, but parts of it were still hot enough to glow a bit. Ilsa fetched her lantern from a saddlebag and a pair of black woolen gloves, wanting thus far to punish herself by enduring the painful numbness in them, but knowing that she would probably need to gun down some people soon, and knowing that frostbite wouldn’t facilitate that. 

Ilsa returned to her home, and closer, with her lantern in her hand, she saw that the roof had caved in in the living room. She stepped up onto the porch. When she crossed the threshold, she slipped on something, fell forward, catching herself on a fallen crossbeam that scraped across the floor as her weight hit it. She cursed and hefted herself back up to her feet, then glanced back to the floor and checked what she’d slipped on. 

A piece of soot darkened brass met her lantern’s light, and she knelt down and picked up the empty bullet casing. Her heart fluttered. She recognized the calibre as belonging to the repeating rifle she kept in the wardrobe in their bedroom. Hoping that this meant Rebecca had hurt or killed one of these bastards, Ilsa pressed on. 

The hallway with the kitchen in it was partially burnt, but mostly intact. Ilsa walked through it, stepping over shattered glass and discarded cookware. A fresh dent had appeared on the corner of the wood stove since the last time Ilsa saw it. She saw that the cabinets above the counters survived the blaze and knew that she should check them for remaining food, but she passed them for the master bedroom. 

Opening the door, she found the bed made, and breathed a sigh of relief. If they hadn’t raped her when they took her, maybe they wouldn’t at all, maybe they just wanted a ransom. Then the remains of David Sampson resurfaced in her head, and she told herself to stop thinking about what might have happened to Rebecca, but only to think about keeping anything more from happening to her. She glanced over at the wardrobe, seeing it open, and hoping that her shotgun hadn’t been taken. She paced over, and pulled aside a couple jackets, some dress shirts. The gun was gone, along with the box of ammunition for it. 

With a sigh, Ilsa turned back to the bed. She dropped down on her belly and peered under it, sliding her lantern over on the floor to illuminate the space underneath it. Furrowing her eyebrows, she reached an arm under it, ran it around, and found only floor. “Dammit,” Ilsa muttered, rolled over onto her back, and suddenly, the frustration from this last thing, this violation of not only her loved ones, her space, but her property, threatened to overwhelm her. A heavy lump strangled her from the back of her throat, and when she tried to breathe, it just came out as a sob. She swallowed hard, and tears brimmed in her eyes. After squeezing them out of her eyes, she wiped them on the back of her hand, grabbed her lantern, and rose to her feet. 

Ilsa returned to the kitchen, and methodically went through the cabinets, retrieving a few cans of food. Then, while grabbing the last one, the can slid across something and she heard a crinkling of paper. She assumed it was a loose label, but grabbed the paper anyway. Glancing at it, she recognized it as a poem. Bittersweet melancholy hit her in the heart; Rebecca left these hidden around the house for her to find, usually filled with saccharine sentiments and riddled with almost plagiaristic references to her favorite poet, Emily Dickinson. At the moment, Ilsa wanted to look away from it, but found herself reading it all the same. It read: 

“You know not how high you are  
Till you are called to rise;  
Still, given your lovesome eyes,  
Your stature might touch the skies. 

“So high you are  
You select your own society,  
Then shut the door  
To the divine majority.

“Once moved - you note the peasant  
At your low Gate,  
And allow her in,  
For Wild Nights to be our luxury.” 

By the time she’d finished reading it, another pair of tears had dribbled down Ilsa’s cheeks. She knew little of what Rebecca meant in these poems, other than that she thought highly of her, but all the same, it was indicative that she cared for her. Ilsa took a shuddering, deep breath through her nose, and let it out smooth through her mouth. Then she creased the paper twice with trembling hands and slid it into her back pocket. 

*****

When Ilsa exited through the back door of her partially burnt house, she saw several figures in the dark by the hand house, illuminated by lanterns. They turned towards her as she approached, and she counted eight people there. Their horses crowded the small stable, a couple of them tied up just outside the stable. As Ilsa approached them, she saw a couple of them hunched over just outside the hand house. Drawing within fifty feet or so, she heard them retching. 

From there, one of them called out to her, “You Ilsa MacGenis?” 

The rotund officer to his left smacked him the back of the head, almost knocking his hat off. “Who the Hell else would it be? Yes, it’s Miss MacGenis.” She recognized the voice as Chief Oswald Dunbar’s, though at that distance, his features vanished in the dark. He marched over to her, the lantern on his belt illuminating his jowls from below. 

Ilsa took another deep breath and calmed her nerves somewhat. “Chief Dunbar.” She gestured at the young men outside the hand house wiping their bile covered chins. “I take it you’ve seen what happened to poor young David Sampson.” 

Now that he was closer, Ilsa saw a scowl on his face. His white handlebar moustache twitched on his upper lip. “Yes I have, and I have to wonder what on Earth you are playing at, Miss MacGenis.” 

She set her jaw, pretty sure that she knew what he meant already, but still having to ask, “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder at the hand house, “that you must know from that boy’s body that this was a Skinner gang attack. And you know that their hideouts are not within Blackwater Police jurisdiction, as they are in the next county over.” 

Ilsa chewed her tongue and matched his jowly scowl. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do your fuckin’ job for you for once, old man.” In the darkness, she thought she saw his face redden, but couldn’t be sure. “I was hoping that you would hunt down these criminals and bring them to justice, as befits your job description. They probably aren’t out of the county yet. They probably made camp, so I was hoping, dear chief, that you would track them down.” 

Disbelief combined with anger crossed his face. “Do I look like a fuckin’ Indian to you? I might be able to track ten horses across the plains, might, have you, if it were goddamned daylight! By the time we are able to track them down, they’ll be out of Plains County.” He let out a frustrated sigh and shook his head as Ilsa clenched her fist. “Look, how about I send a telegram to the marshal over by Manzanita Post, since you’re so hell-bent on putting these men in prison?”

“Because if he could do something about the Skinner gang, then he would have already. You’re the only lawman in the state that has the manpower to take down these men, if you’re smart about it.”

Chief Dunbar threw up his hands beside his head. “Not my jurisdiction, not my problem.” 

Ilsa stepped forward and punched him on the chin hard enough to knock him on his ass, despite the man standing six inches taller than her. The other officers turned towards them from their own conversations as Ilsa shook off her pained hand. One of them, a shorter man with a bit of beard, stepped forward, his revolver out of the holster but pointed at the ground, and looked at Chief Dunbar, saying, “Do I need to arrest this woman, Chief Dunbar?”

The chief scrambled back to his feet. He made a show of not rubbing his jaw, though he subtly worked it back and forth to check if it was broken. He scowled hard at Ilsa and said to the bearded man, “No, Sergeant, I won’t press charges.” Then he turned back to Ilsa. “You’re damned lucky. If you weren’t grieving your home, you’d spend the next few months in a cell. And you can forget about that telegram.” 

Rolling her eyes, Ilsa stepped past the two men towards where she’d hitched her horse beside the hand house. She patted Caleb on the flank as she untied him, saying, “Don’t worry, buddy. We’ll find a place for you to sleep soon enough.”

She heard footsteps behind her, and sighed, turning around to face them. Chief Dunbar had approached her again. She asked him, “What do you want now?”

He shook his head, saying, “I would feel ill at ease if you went after the Skinners alone, Miss MacGenis, and if that is your goal, I’m afraid I’m goin’ to have to take you in.” 

“For one thing, I’d like to see you try, and for another, I’m not going alone. I’m going to gather a posse, we’re going to kill the lot of ‘em, and West Elizabeth will be safer for it. Your welcome.” Then she hefted herself into the saddle, and nudged Caleb to get moving. 

*****

The ride back to Blackwater took a couple hours. The ride gave her a lot of time to think. Too much time. At first, Ilsa simply cursed herself for not grabbing a scarf from the somehow surviving wardrobe in her bedroom. Then she cursed the cold for nipping at her nose and ears as she rode. 

The last conversation she’d had with Harold Nopan came back to her. The way he moaned and whined, but still tried to tell her what happened. She wondered if he had any messages for his family that he wanted to tell her, but didn’t get the opportunity to. After some deliberation, Ilsa decided she’d tell his family what happened herself, and pay for the funeral. She owed him that much, at least. 

Ilsa thought to herself about how best to handle this situation. What they had on their side, at the moment, was numbers, home turf advantage, and for now, firepower. Ilsa had money, if less than she wanted since they stole her lockbox, z

Naturally, the most horrific thing to her lurked in her mind, and then guilt hit her that she considered the unknown things that the Skinners could and would do to Rebecca more horrific than the flaying of her youngest ranch hand. The Skinner gang had a reputation to uphold, and they wouldn’t just ransom her. They’d maim her, at the least. They’d rape her, probably. Having hunted some gangs like this, Ilsa had met some victims of such deeds, and she shuddered to think what that would do to her Rebecca. 

Ilsa felt herself getting overwhelmed, and decided to try and think of happy things. Of course, happy things meant Rebecca. They meant lilt of her laugh, the lyrical nonsense of her poems, her warmth. Under the covers at night, snuggled against each other, kissing or sleeping, her warmth was one of the things that Ilsa knew she couldn’t live without. If they took her warmth from the both of them…

All at once, the tears and choked sobs that Ilsa had been holding back or letting out one or two at a time burst forth. She cried ugly and fierce, and mourned the loss of this life, this beauty that she had built with Rebecca. Ilsa leaned forward and hugged Caleb’s neck, ignoring the pommel of her saddle pressing into her belly, letting the tears and snot flow because she knew these types of men. She didn’t know these men in particular, but she knew their type, and she knew that when they had power over someone, they would exercise it in whatever vile way they could think of. There would be no going back to the way things were. 

*****

Ilsa woke up to a tug on her pant leg. Her eyes fluttered open groggily, and before she could blink the bleariness out of her eyes well enough to see, her ears caught the sound of her horse’s shoed hooves clapping on the street, and knew she must be in Blackwater. By the time she’d blinked enough to see properly, she had made out the shape of a woman in a dress walking beside her horse and tugging insistently on her pant leg. 

The streetlamps lighting up the streets cast enough light on the woman for Ilsa to get a better look at her. Her makeup was caked on, her dress’s neckline hung low on her chest, and the hemline was cut high enough that Ilsa was pretty sure the woman was a prostitute. Under the yellow light of the streetlamps, though, she looked a bit sickly, and thus unappealing to any solicitors, and so Ilsa wondered what she was doing out there. 

“Miss?” the woman beside Ilsa said, giving her pant leg one more tug before she realized Ilsa was awake. “Miss, are you alright? Ought I fetch the doctor?”

Waving her off, Ilsa said, “No need, no need. I just fell asleep on the ride over.” She leaned forward and patted Caleb’s neck, then winced as she realized the pommel of the saddle must have left a bruise on her gut from her slumping forward as she slept. Glancing around, the street appeared empty to Ilsa, and she said, “You’d better get off the street. Cops will be right behind me, and if I recall correctly, prostitution is only legal indoors in this town.” 

“Thanks for the warning,” she said with a chuckle, “but you don’t exactly look like a working girl yourself. How do you know the laws surrounding such things?” She narrowed her eyes, a bit suspicious. 

“I had it explained to me once. I was a bounty hunter for a few years, so I spent a lot of time with the police. They only have so much to talk about, you know.” Ilsa raised her hands above her head and stretched. “Anyhow, what time is it?” 

The prostitute pointed down the street at the saloon, whose lights were still on, and from where a bit of piano music sounded. “Just came from there, clock said it’s about 2:15. I was just headed home.” 

Taking another glance around, Ilsa said, “Need me to walk you home?” 

She shook her head and patted the little handbag under her arm. “No, thank you. I’ve got a purse pistol, should anyone accost me. You have a safe night, now.” The prostitute offered Ilsa a friendly smile and turned around, walking away. Ilsa shrugged and rode Caleb over to the saloon. 

After tying her horse up outside next to a couple other horses, Ilsa stepped into the saloon at somewhat of a waddle. She often found herself walking like that after falling asleep in the saddle. Inside, the saloon was still lit up, but about as populated as it was when Ilsa was in it previously, fourteen hours earlier. Some four people sat in the common room, including the skinny man with the blond braid at the piano, facing away from her. Ilsa immediately identified three of the men in the room as drunks, from their slurred speech and reddened cheeks. The man at the piano played an odd song for a saloon; rather than a jaunty, happy tune, he played a melancholy classical piece in a minor key. 

Ilsa took a seat at the bar, only to find the bartender sleeping in a chair leaned back against the wall beside the cupboard. She blinked heavily, almost falling back to sleep then and there, and shook the sleep off and said, “Hey, barkeep.” His eyelids opened, and he almost fell out of his chair. “I’ve got a question to ask you.”

He yawned and sat up straight. Since Ilsa saw him earlier that day, he’d grown a stubbly shadow on his jaw, and bags hung under his eyes. “Yeah, what do you want?” 

Leaning forward with her elbow on the bar, Ilsa said, “I’m putting together a posse. I need capable, even dangerous people. I’m going after a gang.” 

The bartender narrowed his eyes and glanced around the bar, just as one of the drunks fell asleep and his head hit the table he sat at with a thunk. “You think coming to the saloon at two in the morning is where you’re going to find capable people? Shit, I even let that lady over there,” he said, pointing at the blonde at the piano, “play some sad shit to try and get them to go to bed already. Come back tomorrow, around seven o’clock. That’s about when we get our best population.” He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, closing his eyes. 

Ilsa’s eye twitched. “I can’t wait ‘til tomorrow evening.” She sat back from the bar and looked around the room again. The drunks seemed to be headed off, either upstairs to bed, or out of the saloon to go home. She looked at the woman at the piano that she’d originally thought was a skinny man. She wore a baggy, somewhat stained shirt, denim jacket, loose pants, and a red scarf, as well as a hefty Buck Cattleman revolver on her hip. Cupping her hands around her mouth, Ilsa called out to the room, “Hey! I’m putting together a posse to take down a group of Skinners that kidnapped a woman and killed two men. Who’s with me?” 

A couple of the drunks turned to each other, shared a quick chuckle, then went upstairs. The third just shook his head and stumbled out the front door. Ilsa ground her teeth hard enough against each other that she thought they might crack. The piano music stopped, prompting Ilsa to turn towards the woman sitting at it, and finding her turned halfway around to look at her. “What’s in it for me?” 

Ilsa stood and walked over to the woman at the piano, hands on her hips. “Eight dollars a head, besides bringing justice and safety to West Elizabeth.” She took a peek around her to get a better look at her clothes, seeing that her jacket’s elbows and work pants had been patched several times and that her shirt was stained. “Looks like you could use a bit of money. Warmer jacket, at least. If you come back with me to my ranch and agree to help me, I can find you a jacket more suited for February.” 

The blonde chewed her tongue a little bit and turned towards Ilsa enough that she finally got a good look at her face. Her face was that of a working beauty, tough and tanned, but with sharp cheekbones and freckles dusted on like cinnamon. “I don’t need your charity,” she spat, looking at Ilsa with hard eyes. “Eight dollars a head sounds alright, though. One question, though. Where’s the money?”

“In the bank. Don’t worry, I’ll write you a check for each one you bring down, so if I get shot, you’ll get your money.” 

The woman nodded and got up from the piano bench with a sigh. “It’s a deal, then. I’ll meet you down here in the morning.” She started for the stairs in the corner of the room. 

Ilsa called after her, “Hang on a second.” She stopped and turned around, cocking an eyebrow. “What’s your name? I’m Ilsa MacGenis.” 

“Sadie Adler,” she said, and turned back around to go up and to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, sorry for the late update, but my computer crapped out late last month, and I've been trying to write on my phone, so please forgive any typos or breaks between chapters while I try to get it fixed.


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